Shoulder Season

by Jackie North

  “You should have a hat,” said Solvin.

  “I was going to buy an Icelandic sweater,” said Ben. “Isn’t that what tourists do?”

  Solvin turned to look at him with a smile that seemed warm with acknowledgment and approval all at once. Ben smiled back, enjoying the gentle feelings between them as they headed along a street whose signs proclaimed it to be Laekjargata, though how that sounded and what it meant, Ben had no idea. The street was wide, with a green metal barrier in the middle that almost seemed an afterthought to safety, but as the traffic was so calm, it was almost not needed. The sidewalks were wide, and because everything was so wide and open, it didn’t seem like they were in a city at all but a small village.

  They walked until Solvin signaled they should cross the street where the blue circles with white arrows indicated that they should. On the other side, they went into a small restaurant with rough wooden tables and bench seats that was not at all what Ben thought an Icelandic restaurant should look like. Though, to be honest, he wasn’t entirely sure what preconceived notions he’d had. In fact, he had none, and now here he was.

  “We order at the counter,” said Solvin. “The lamb soup is very good, as is the pancake. It’s nothing fancy, but that’s what we eat, if you’d like to try.”

  Ben was willing, so he nodded to show he did want to try, because frankly the way Solvin talked about it made him realize he was starving.

  “I’ll have the soup and the pancake and, yeah, a giant Coke, please,” said Ben, realizing only too late he’d assumed the guy behind the counter in his white apron and puffy hat could speak English.

  “Ja, ja,” said the guy. “And you, sir?” he asked as he turned to Solvin.

  “I’ll have the same,” said Solvin.

  Solvin paid with brightly colored but what was certainly official Icelandic money. They took the metal number they were given and found a place at one of the long tables. Solvin sat across from Ben and laid his cane against the table and seemed to want to take off his sling.

  “Let me help,” said Ben.

  “I should leave it on,” said Solvin, though he seemed dismayed by this prospect. “I’ll just eat one-handed.”

  Ben jumped up and gestured with his hands, miming the motions of taking off the sling.

  “I won’t tell,” he said. “And I’ll help you with it on after we eat.”

  Solvin let him do this, and Ben helped Solvin off with his jacket and his wool hat and hung both their coats on one of the hooks on the wall. While they waited, the conversation between them faltered, but then that could have been merely the display of Icelandic manners. On the other side of the restaurant, Ben could hear several loud voices talking in English, and as the sound bounced off the tall ceilings, it was obvious the small group was made up of Americans. He’d never realized before how boldly Americans stood out with loud voices, overly bright clothes, and an attitude that seemed to expand to fill the space around them.

  While Ben looked at them, he felt Solvin looking at him.

  “Yes,” said Solvin with a smile. “They belong to you.”

  “Are we that bad?” asked Ben, laughing a little.

  “Not bad,” said Solvin. “Just loud.” But again this was said without heat or any kind of anger. It was an observation only.

  “We do tend to go about like we own the earth,” said Ben, wanting to apologize, though he knew he had no control over it. “But we’re nice. Most of us, anyway.”

  “Every American I’ve ever met has been nice,” said Solvin. “Loud but nice. Friendly, you know? Just ready to be friends. Like you.”

  Ben took a breath, just on the verge of explaining about Alan, which made no sense, as Solvin probably didn’t want to know and it didn’t matter anyway. Alan was in his past, and Ben had no idea where his future would take him. But then the food came, and silence fell over their end of the table as they ate. The lamb soup was very good and tangy in a way he’d not expected. The pancakes were so delicious that Ben gobbled all three down before he realized Solvin was watching him as he slowly ate his own lamb soup.

  “This is nice,” said Ben, and he cringed inside because it came out so lame, so banal in the way Alan was always chiding him for. Because nothing could be nice; nice was stupid and easy. Things needed to be interesting or complex or layered, and while Ben could understand all of that, he didn’t always have the energy or the desire to be that analytic. Things were nice or they were not, and wasn’t that enough? Not for Alan.

  “It is nice,” said Solvin. “I like the food here. It reminds me of home.”

  “Isn’t this home?” asked Ben, glad to be able to ask and focus on that rather than the glum feeling that surrounded him every time he thought about Alan.

  “I come from outside of Selfoss, which is south from Raykjavik,” said Solvin. “My mother and I lived there till I moved to the city. She has a little house where she knits and raises a few sheep. She sells wool to the factory for tourist sweaters. I mean, she sells most of the wool and then makes a few sweaters by hand.”

  “Oh,” said Ben, now understanding the look Solvin had given him when Ben mentioned buying an iconic Icelandic sweater. “So you would know the best place to get one.”

  “I do,” said Solvin. “Maybe we could walk there after lunch?”

  Ben nodded, glad to be invited, but confusion warred with that pleasure, as he did not know what Solvin wanted from him. What Alan had wanted, it turned out, was a trophy boyfriend, the romance of poverty Alan thought Ben carried around with him. It was not romantic being poor, and it was not fun, but Ben was unable to resist the draw of Alan, who had money—and old money at that—tons of friends, and could always be counted on for something interesting to do or talk about. The mix was a heady one. And now here he was, having a great lunch with a nice guy, and all he could think about was whether or not Solvin was a jerk when it was unfair to think that when Solvin had only been nice to him.

  There was that word again: nice.

  “We don’t have to,” said Solvin. “If you’ve other plans?”

  It was obvious Ben’s expression was sending the wrong message by his silence and that soon there’d be an argument over it. But that was how Alan was, not Solvin, and Ben stopped himself with a painful jerk of his mental brakes. Here he was in Iceland with no Alan in sight, sitting across from an Icelandic god who seemed only to want to share a meal and take a stroll to buy a sweater. Who, at the same time, acted like he had no expectation that things would or should move beyond being simply nice. There was no sense of rush and hurry about him, even as he waited for Ben’s answer. There was only a sense of stillness, of peace while he sat there, though his eyebrows rose above his blue eyes with an expression of someone waiting (and expecting) for more niceness to come along, which would suit him just fine.

  “I don’t have other plans,” said Ben. “Look, about Alan—”

  He paused, waiting for Solvin to stop him with a look or a “wow, that’s boring” or “who cares about Alan.” But nothing like that happened. Instead Solvin leaned forward, almost brushing his long sleeve in his soup, and seemed quite prepared to listen. It almost felt as if Solvin would take the tatty edges of the story Ben was about to share and absorb them until they were no longer painful.

  “We broke up,” said Ben. “We broke up because he was angry that I wanted to go to the Munich Residenz. It’s a museum, you see.”

  Solvin nodded, and by the light in his eyes, Ben thought that Solvin might have actually gone to the museum at some point, though he didn’t say anything, only waited for Ben to continue.

  “Oktoberfest, right?” said Ben. “We had this trip planned, and Alan was going to buy the tickets, and I was going to pay him back. Only I wanted to go to a museum or something in addition to drinking more beer than we’d ever drunk in our lives, and Alan got pissed. And stayed pissed. Until finally all we were doing was fighting—”

  “And that’s when he punched you?” asked Solvin.

&nb
sp; Ben felt his face tighten; he’d been hoping nobody noticed, as the bruises were already fading. The punch hadn’t been hard, after all, but it left Ben with a tidy black eye. Only nobody in Iceland had said anything. Either they didn’t notice or were being polite. Until now. Except that Ben had the sense Solvin was still being polite, as maybe to ignore it would have been the rude thing to do in Solvin’s mind. Ben didn’t know.

  “Yeah,” said Ben. “He’s mostly outrageous and gets worked up just for show, but sometimes, well, only a couple of times. Two times—”

  “He’s hit you twice?” asked Solvin. He sat back in his chair and looked at Ben with wide, astonished eyes.

  Solvin might be so disgusted with Ben that he was on the verge of getting up and walking out, or he might have a great deal to say about men who allowed themselves to be hit or who stayed with abusive partners. But Solvin did none of those things. Instead he looked at his soup bowl and drew his sleeve out of the zone of danger. When he looked up at Ben, his face was still.

  “You did leave him,” said Solvin. “Right? You didn’t stay around for more of that, right?”

  “Yeah, I left him, and I think I lost all of our mutual friends in the divorce,” said Ben, trying to make a joke out of it that didn’t quite work. “We had one last fight the day before he went to Germany, and the day after, I headed here. Somewhere that Alan would never go, right? I was going to go to the one museum with the old swords and stuff, and then that church—”

  “Hall-grim-skirk-iya,” said Solvin, or at least that’s what it sounded like. “Those are good places.”

  “And maybe see a waterfall.”

  Ben took a breath and let it out slowly. He didn’t mind that Alan would not have wanted to see any of those things. More, he felt betrayed that Alan would have insisted that none of those things were interesting or worthy of a visit. In Alan’s mind, only the newest bars and Icelandic beer would have been on the list, that and going through all the streets shouting at the top of his lungs while drunk. In Boulder those activities were fun, but now Ben realized anything he’d found fun (and nice) was never on the day’s activity sheet. Only those things Alan deemed appropriate.

  But now he was here, and while he didn’t need anybody to approve his choices, it felt good to be with someone who wanted to do the same sorts of things he wanted to do. To have Solvin agree with him. Not because Solvin was dictating to him but because he actually agreed. Or at least he seemed to. Ben needed to test this.

  “Why are they good places?” asked Ben. “I mean, they looked good on the website, but—”

  “They are very Icelandic places,” said Solvin. “A lot of tourists like the bars at night because it’s so safe to walk around, and also the museum with all the punk stuff, which can be fun, but the church and the beach and the waterfalls, they are all very still, in a way.”

  “Still,” said Ben. He didn’t understand, but he wanted to.

  “You will see,” said Solvin. “Maybe you will like it, or maybe you won’t—”

  Ben opened his mouth to explain himself a bit better, that he wasn’t like the loud American group that was gathering up their shopping bags and cameras, all of it screaming money and excess, except that Solvin dipped his head and looked up at Ben through his blond hair in exactly the way to draw Ben’s attention. As if he meant to, and the message behind the look was so new and undefined that Ben found himself shutting his mouth so fast his teeth clicked.

  “I think you will like it. I think you came to Iceland for a reason,” said Solvin.

  “What reason?” asked Ben, because he was getting to the point where he wanted to know why Iceland was the place he picked rather than someplace warm or someplace with more museums.

  “I don’t know,” said Solvin. “Sometimes it’s like that for me when I make decisions. Like when I decided to leave Selfoss and move to the big city and work as an architect in an office. I finally realized it was so that I could go home sometimes. You can’t go home if you never leave. But you don’t know until afterwards. And now, well, after the accident, all I want to do is get away from Iceland for a while, but I can’t. On account of my injuries, you see.”

  “Oh.” Ben wasn’t quite sure what to say to that, so he went back to polishing off his lamb soup and his icy-but-not-tasting-quite-right Coke. As he crunched the ice in his teeth, he wondered whether the ice had come from the glaciers. Probably not, but it was fun to think about. “Maybe I could see a glacier while I’m here.”

  Solvin smiled, showing his teeth—clean, white Icelandic teeth Ben knew would be the envy of anybody. Everybody in Iceland seemed to have a sturdy look about them, bursting with health and energy, but Solvin seemed to have an extra shimmer that felt good to look at, as though Ben’s empty soul was drawing on the Well of Solvin and feeling the better for it. Well, it wouldn’t be fair if Ben were the only one whose pitcher was being filled.

  “And you?” asked Ben. “If we’re going to wander around looking at Icelandic things, you should have a say, too.”

  “I find,” said Solvin, still smiling, “that I don’t often take the time, or have the interest, so it will be nice to show someone around.”

  Nice. Solvin had just said it would be nice, like that was a good thing. That this made a 180 degree change from Alan rang in Ben’s head so loud that he almost missed Solvin’s little nod and the fact that he was waiting for Ben to say something. To agree or disagree or whatever. It was up to Ben.

  “Kind of like people in Colorado never go in the mountains,” said Ben in reassuring tones. “Happens all the time. It’s only when guests come—”

  “—that a local gets to see the sights,” said Solvin, finishing for him. “It’s only a fifteen-minute walk from here, but do you want more pancakes?”

  “Yes,” said Ben, smiling right back at Solvin. “I would like pancakes very much.”

  “I’ll have some too,” said Solvin. “If you wouldn’t mind going up?”

  Solvin looked a little embarrassed to have to ask, but it made sense to Ben. The little restaurant was getting quite crowded, and even the short distance to the counter would be cumbersome when Solvin used his cane. So Ben patted his wallet to show he would buy the pancakes and went up to order. The same young man only smiled when Ben ordered more pancakes, and cheerfully made change and gave Ben another metal number.

  “It’ll be a few minutes,” said the young man. “This is the brisk time now.”

  “Brisk time” obviously meant rush time, so Ben nodded, made his way back to their table, and sat across from Solvin once more. Other patrons had also taken their places along the bench seat, so the noise factor was doubled in spite of the fact that everybody looked and sounded like a local and the Americans had already left.

  “We could stop to get you a sweater,” said Solvin. He leaned forward across the table so Ben could hear him, and when he was closer, Ben could see the little specks, like diamonds, in Solvin’s blue eyes. “It’s on the way, you see, and it’s the place that carries the sweaters my mother knits, as well as the mass-produced ones.”

  Solvin’s plan sounded nice, it sounded very nice, except that Ben still felt the stigma of thinking that way. Solvin deserved better—Ben deserved better—so he tried it on for size.

  “That sounds nice,” said Ben. “Maybe we could get a coffee, which would help me with the rest of my jet lag.”

  “I know just the place we should go,” said Solvin. “It’s not on the way, but it might be nice to stop and have a break after looking at the church.”

  “Yes,” said Ben. He found himself smiling in anticipation of a nice stroll down a nice street with a nice guy, who seemed to want to do the same. Who really seemed like he wanted the same thing out of their stroll that Ben wanted. Except doubts crowded in his head so quickly that Ben had to fight them off.

  “This seems like a walking kind of city,” said Ben, giving his doubts a shove and voicing the nicer thoughts he’d had since his arrival the day before.
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br />   “We have cars,” said Solvin, waving his hands as if to count the number of vehicles Icelanders possessed. “But everywhere in the city is mostly flat, so it’s easier to walk, especially when the sun is shining. Or even when it’s not.”

  There was a tone in Solvin’s voice that seemed to indicate that even when the sun wasn’t shining, Iceland was a good place. A nice place. And this idea made Ben feel like smiling again, so he did. This was matched by the light in Solvin’s eyes that deepened his smile and made the silence between them feel like an agreement, rather than anything awkward like it had been at the beginning of the meal.

  “Here are our pancakes,” said Solvin as he looked up to see the waiter coming over with a tray. “Can you hand me the jam, please? And the butter, when you’re done with it.”

  “Sure,” said Ben. A part of his mind, the part standing agog at how easy this all seemed, wondered if this moment between them was a speck of goodness that indicated what was to follow, or whether it was so idyllic that it could not bear repetition and soon Solvin would find fault and Ben would get defensive, and he’d end up going home in the morning.

  He dressed his pancakes, rolled them all up, and lined them up in a row of three on his plate. Solvin was looking at him, and when Ben looked up, Solvin did the same thing to his pancakes.

  “Race you,” said Solvin.

  And so they raced.

  THE SWEATER shop on Skólavörðustígur Street was a combination of shops. The front seemed to cater to tourists who wanted to buy a reasonably priced Icelandic sweater and then continue on their merry way. The back of the shop, where Solvin led him, was set up differently. Along two walls were wooden cubbyholes full of different colors of yarn. The other two walls had knitting supplies and books and all the things related to hand knitting. In the middle of the wooden floor were two long racks of sweaters, and along one end was a table full of neatly folded sweaters, some brown, some gray, some white, and some black.